"An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known
informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple
executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver
workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often
spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s
work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17
a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car
was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is
unimaginable,” he said.

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are
not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks
an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While
factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the
smoke and stench of cigarettes.

Foxconn Technology has dozens of
facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it
assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics
for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo,
Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was
Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to
discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people
overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

The economic engines in China and in Asia are fueled in ways American workers can't or won't work under. It isn't a matter of whether American workers are skilled or not.